Wednesday, February 2, 2011
How happy is your country?
Bhutan, a country which some might consider to be rather poor and backward (internet and television were banned until 1999), has decided to promote an alternative to the GNP for measuring and comparing countries: Gross National Happiness. Is this just a way to get their country to rank higher? Can happiness really be measured? What do you think about the prime minister’s ideas for how it should be defined? If using this yardstick, how does Slovakia measure up? (You may want to look at the other articles about happiness on this website, or do a bit of research on Bhutan before commenting.)
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Happiness- a phenomenon we all want to possess in the means of both long term and short term. The question is does it mean we all want the same thing? Not completely. Under the word happiness we all imagine something different. However I am confident enough to proclaim that we all have some components of long term happiness that cannot be ignored by any of us. Take perhaps health. Nobody can be completely happy, if his health isn’t perfectly all right. The same counts for love. Since nobody can grow up without the help of another person, the need to not be alone is undeniably chased in all of us. The same counts for food, since you can’t be happy if you’re starving to death. There are more components of happiness that are identically present in all of us and Bhutan tries to please at least the ones it can.
ReplyDeleteFor me it is the one and only way to go when pursuing absolute peace and harmony. Bhutan is trying to reach a state where its entire people encounter long term happiness and that is the only really thing that leaders and governments of all countries should do. In my opinion to be happy most of our short life is more than some would realize it is. Take perhaps Slovakia: Even if you might find it hard to measure happiness, because it is so relative, I think you are able to say that most of Slovakia’s people aren’t (at least in the means of long term) overwhelmingly happy for number of reasons: economic situation, illnesses, stress etc. The Slovak government probably has a utilitarian goal, but in my perspective does way too little to reach it. But Bhutan on the other hand puts a whole new perspective to the utilitarian way of thinking.
Bhutan should be an example to all people in the world. If so many of us want to reach world wide peace and similar ideals we have to start from our own selves and the environments we live in. We have to start living a life with the goal of making other people happy. This is my perception of one way we can take in our lives and please don’t tell me you cannot please everyone, just because everyone has a different source of happiness. In my opinion at the end of the day we are all the same; either we go to sleep happy or not. And this philosophy presented by Bhutan can only be accepted by us, for it creates a space where long term happiness is guaranteed to each and every individual.
Branislav Skocek IB3
Despite the fact that Bhutan is a very poor country, it’s people are still honestly happy. Somehow I’m not sure that they can prove such a thing. I’m sure that there are people in Bhutan, that are really happy even though they don’t have everything they need, but I think that every country has some of those. What they are trying to prove, is that they can persuade their citizens into thinking that they are in fact doing the right thing, as was mentioned in the article, and the outcome of this would probably result in the happiness of a certain individual. But in my opinion that is not classified as happiness.
ReplyDeleteAs argued by many psychologists, the true, inner happiness of a person is determined either by their genes, situational factors or is within their own control. As far as I know Bhutan claims to be a democratic country that serves it’s inhabitants well, but then what about the poor refugees that were repeatedly mentioned in most of the comments below this article? Allegedly they were banished from their country of origin and can never go back. They were forced to live in refugee camps in Nepal and it doesn’t seem to me that they were too happy about it. I also think that the GNH(Gross National Happiness)-a measure of growth in happiness, that the former King of Bhutan supposedly introduced in 1972, is not a reliable source of information and does not tell us much about the country’s state at all. It’s not official, nor recognised by any other country, so it’s basically used just for their own records. It’s their ‘’way of life’’ as the minister said. According to a similar system of happiness-measuring , Slovakia landed somewhere near the end of the list. That means we are said to be a part of the less-happy and unsatisfied nations.
Although I think that there is something fishy about the statement that the people of Bhutan are sincerely happy, I have to admit that some of the steps that the Bhutan government claims to take are quite helpful and might be of importance, such as riding bicycles instead of private vehicles and the celebrations and festivals, that are supposed to bring all of the Bhutan people closer. Alas, I don’t think these factors would make a rapid difference in the overall happiness of these people.
Mária Dudáková
@ Brano:
ReplyDeleteIt is really hard to think about issues like this without the key term being defined. And what is even worse, it cannot be defined, since, like you said, different values are important to everyone. But you are absolutely right to claim that there are certain things in life that are important probably to everyone. However, you must agree with me when I say that no one can have everything in their life. No life is perfect. And therefore I think that happiness is more about the attitude or the way you look at what you have and what you do not more than the actual possessing of those things.
But since the government cannot really influence our attitudes, I, like you, think it is great that the Bhutan’s one is trying to do something about the things it can. Because even though your rather negative evaluation of Slovaks’ happiness might seem like a quite controversial thing to say, I must say that there is something true about it. However, let us take a look at the reasons. Our lack of happiness might not be caused by problems like the bad state of our economy, but more by the fact that our government is not even trying to solve these problems.
Therefore I agree with your statement that Bhutan’s government should be an example to all others. However, when you say that not everyone can be pleased by these governmental endeavours at the same time and then claim that Bhutan’s philosophy guarantees happiness to every individual, it seems a little bit like contradicting yourself and I do not understand what you meant by it.